1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to flight control systems for aircraft. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for selecting and transporting commands from primary controllers to actuator controllers for controlling actuators on an aircraft or other vehicle and for transporting reporting data from the actuator controllers back to the primary controllers.
2. Background
Actuator commands in a fly-by-wire flight control system for an aircraft may comprise, for example, position commands, rate commands, and operation mode commands. In a full-authority fly-by-wire flight control system, multiple flight controllers may be used to provide redundant sources of actuator control commands to ensure their high availability. In such a case, a selection of the actuator commands that will be used to control actuators on the aircraft needs to be made from the commands provided my multiple redundant sources. The selected set of commands then needs to be distributed to the appropriate actuators. For example, there may be primary sources of actuator control commands from which a selection is ordinarily made and a dissimilar backup source of actuator control commands which is selected only in the case of loss of all primary sources.
It also may be desirable for the flight controllers on an aircraft to be able to turn the electrical power to individual actuator controllers on and off in parallel with the actuator control commands. In addition, it may be desirable to transport reporting data from remote actuators back to the primary flight controllers on an aircraft.
Thus, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that take into account one or more of the issues discussed above, as well as possible other issues.